Jack Chambers (Dublin West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their very comprehensive presentations and submissions. I wish to follow up on the point my colleague, Deputy Connolly, made. We have many suggestions for legislation. Deputy O'Callaghan mentioned codifying the right to privacy. Others have mentioned verification of identity, which is important. Has any country brought those moving parts together in any way? We are at a very primitive stage in addressing this. The witnesses are all nodding their heads, which I will take as confirmation. Mr. Gubbins made an interesting point, which follows what Professor Carthy said. One issue that seems to arise from the get-go is that a false identity can be used to create an account or multiple accounts. If we legislated to require age verification, it would mean that the publisher, that is, the account holder, could not hide behind anonymity. That seems to be a huge issue across all social media platforms. A lot of these problems proliferate through fake accounts. It could be simple legislation. The problem arises in making it cross-jurisdictional and regulating it. Do the witnesses have any thoughts on that?

I believe that if people express something, they should stand by it, whether it relates to what we are talking about today or is potentially defamatory, as Deputy O'Callaghan mentioned. If a journalist writes something, it is published in a newspaper and the journalist stands over what he or she has written. It seems that on the Internet, the majority of difficulties arise from accounts that nobody can track or verify. Do the witnesses have any thoughts on how to deal with that properly? Professor Carthy mentioned registration. I note that Government services require proper verification of identity. How do we deal with that?